But this knowledge fades into insignificance in face of the pure, unadulterated love she feels surrounding her at that moment in time.
A shadow moves behind her.
Yori turns and is blinded by the flash of a camera; Beate Becht’s camera.
116
Inspector Takeda has the feeling that his life has been one festering lie spreading itself slowly but unavoidably like an oil stain.
Takeda gets out of the motel bed, looks outside at the tiny garden courtyard with its shrine and its kami. The clouds continue to tumble back and forth in front of the full moon, which sheds intermittent light on the statue of the household spirit.
The kami looks at him and says: you searched for your father hoping you would find yourself, but you found someone else.
The morning after finding the military dog-tags, Takeda visited his mother in hospital and stood beside her bed, his legs trembling. She was groggy and nauseous from the stomach pump that had saved her life and from the sedatives the hospital staff had given her afterwards. Her eyes were closed, but Takeda dangled the dog-tags in front of her nose nonetheless and asked loud and clear if they belonged to him. He repeated the question until she opened her eyes. She smiled, closed her eyes, and nodded almost imperceptibly.
Takeda spent the following night brooding over his plan. He sensed a determination he had lacked his entire life. Now he had his mother’s confirmation, his energy seemed inexhaustible. He fulfilled his normal everyday duties with enough vigour to make his colleagues jealous and his superiors nod in approval. He then contacted Dr Adachi who worked at the Prefectural Department of the Ministry of Health. The two men had met and become friends when Adachi gave a talk on forensic techniques. Adachi had set his sights on becoming a pathologist. In the meantime he spent his days visiting factories to monitor their implementation of the health guidelines and to spot potential health risks. Adachi was gay and had a hidden drink problem. He was afraid this would prevent him from pursuing a career in the police. Takeda didn’t mind. Adachi was an outsider like himself, that was the important thing. They got drunk together on a regular basis and philosophised at length over the emptiness of existence. It established a bond between them. The one-night-stands Adachi would chase as if there was no tomorrow, only to be rebuffed for the umpteenth time, were meaningless in comparison. Takeda explained his problem. He was trying to trace a soldier from the Second World War on the basis of a set of dog-tags: “A friend of my father’s, from when he was a boy.” Takeda told Adachi a story he had made up: his father had done business with the Dutch before the war, had married a Dutch woman and had settled in the Netherlands. He died in Rotterdam from a major stroke shortly before the end of the war.
“Do you think he’s still alive?”
“I’m not sure. But if he is, then I can ask him about my father, what he was like.”
“I can use my ministry contacts to find out.”
Takeda tried to hide the excitement his friend’s words aroused inside him. He wasn’t sure if it was working. Adachi gave him a strange, bemused look.
But the doctor said nothing. A week later, Takeda had a name and an address. And, finally, a way of finding out who he was.
The dog-tags belonged to a soldier named Masajiro Amitani, fifty-three year old, living in a home for the disabled in the city of Morioka in the Iwate prefecture. In spite of the patient’s relatively young age, his official malady was “atypical muscular dystrophy”. Takeda visited the place and gave a false name and occupation. He was well prepared. His job made it easy for him to secure forged papers and lying was a piece of cake. To add to his disguise he wore a pair of horn-rimmed glasses, which completely transformed his face, and a cloth cap, which was popular in Japan at the time, to hide the colour of his hair. Takeda felt awkward as he entered the building, but the management and the nursing personnel had no reason to suspect him. He was allowed to see the patient without the least problem.
What had he expected? A sturdy, robust man like himself? Masajiro Amitani was crumpled in his wheelchair, his eyes sunken, his cheeks hollow, his limbs dried out and brittle as a twig. But there was something determined in his gaze and tenacity in his demeanour that his wasted muscles belied. Takeda introduced himself as a civil servant doing research into veterans and their war past with a view to improving their maintenance allowances. Masajiro fell for it hook, line and sinker. Without the slightest hesitation – he was still every inch the patriot – he reeled off dates and the places he had been stationed.
“Camp Pangkalan-Balei?”
“Absolutely. Two years as a guard. Then they transferred me to Xinjing in China.”
“What did you do there?” Takeda avoided focusing his questions too quickly on the women’s camp in South Sumatra.
Masajiro hesitated for the first time in the conversation. His eagerness melted. The large Adam’s apple in his emaciated throat bobbed up and down.
“In my day that was classified information, sir.”
“I know,” said Takeda, although he had no idea what the man was talking about. He was relying on his intuition, and his intuition told him he had to pretend he knew exactly what the invalid ex-soldier was referring to. “But the government has decided we have to put matters right on the war. Patriots like you who fought for their country were left with a shadow over their heads. Isn’t it time you received the proper reward for your patriotism?”
Masajiro stared at him. The whites of his eyes were yellow and bloodshot. Takeda felt a prickling sensation in his hands, very weird. But he was otherwise calm and even a little lightheaded, as if he was watching this encounter as a third party witness.
Then the ex-soldier nodded.
And Akio Takeda learned for the first time in his life about Unit 731.
“It was a secret operation ordered by senior military officials who were in direct contact with the emperor. They insisted that we were the most courageous of patriots, the most loyal of soldiers, the guardians of Japan’s honour. Our superiors didn’t say much beyond that, but you know how things are: soldier to soldier. We heard stories from ex-servicemen that the seeds had been sown in occupied China and Japan for a master race that would avenge Nippon if capitulation in the war turned out to be unavoidable. In those days our cities had suffered heavy bombing, and while no one dared suggest that Japan was losing the war – on punishment of execution – we all knew it in our hearts. But that made us all the more determined, do you understand? It might sound strange to someone from a different generation like yourself, but we thought it was normal and even desirable that our best doctors conducted experiments on prisoners of war. I’m not a monster. I was often left shivering in my shoes when I had to carry the dying and the dead to the quarry outside the camp and saw what had happened to them. But I turned my heart into a stone because I knew that these sacrifices were being offered for the future of Nippon. They injected the prisoners with experimental agents designed in theory to strengthen their cells. They were then infected with the black plague or typhus, exposed to dioxins, extremes of cold and heat. They even tested how long they could stay under water before they drowned.
The experiments failed one by one, but new ideas emerged to replace them. Pregnant Chinese women were fed chemical cocktails designed to produce super strong wonder babies. They were then infected with syphilis and the doctors observed how the foetus reacted. Every now and then we were ordered to inspect the women’s manko. They had to stand on their hands and knees with their naked vulvas pointing upwards to allow the doctors to see if their medication had prevented the syphilis from taking hold. Sometimes they resisted, so we sat on them and held them by the throat to keep them still. If they didn’t do what they were told we strangled them. The syphilis made the manko swell, of course, and you didn’t need to be a doctor to see it. One day the doctor on duty was hit in the face by puss spurting from a vaginal wound he had pressed too hard. In the commotion that followed – the woman was immediately decapitated – I must have picked up some of the infected fluid. A few days later I came down with a fever and fainted. For some unknown reason, probably because of the chemicals they had injected into the woman’s body, the syphilis had mutated. The doctors were mystified. My muscles swelled up then wasted away and my bones started to disintegrate. I was rushed from Xinjing and admitted to a military hospital in Hiroshima located in a separate building a distance from the civilian hospital. No one was allowed in without authorisation. The doctors working in the place had all been recruited by Unit 731. I was given a pension of thirty-six yen per month. In those days a headmaster earned eighteen yen per month. I was proud. The government clearly valued my sacrifice for the fatherland.